Max Verstappen dominated the Italian Grand Prix in stunning fashion, bringing back memories of his 2023 supremacy. What changed for Red Bull? The champion himself has some answers.
Verstappen cut the first chicane at the start to hold position against Lando Norris. Red Bull’s pit wall quickly instructed him to surrender the lead to the McLaren driver to avoid a penalty.
After following team orders, Verstappen didn’t wait long to strike back.
He executed a brilliant move around the outside at Turn 1, showcasing his Red Bull’s superior pace in dramatic fashion.
From there, it was a masterclass. Verstappen cruised to victory while McLaren attempted a desperate strategy gamble that completely backfired.
By the checkered flag, Norris found himself a distant 19 seconds behind the flying Dutchman.
“Up until now we’ve had a lot of races where we were just shooting left and right a little bit with the set-up of the car,” Verstappen told GPblog after his commanding win.
“Quite extreme changes, which shows that we were not in control. We were not fully understanding what to do.”
This transformation didn’t happen by accident.
After the British Grand Prix, Red Bull Racing underwent a leadership shakeup, with Laurent Mekies taking the reins from Christian Horner.
Verstappen sees a clear difference in Mekies’ approach to solving the team’s performance struggles.
“With Laurent having an engineering background, he’s asking the right questions to the engineers – common-sense questions, so I think that works really well.”
The three-time world champion believes this technical leadership is exactly what the team needed.
“Plus, you try to understand from the things that you have tried,” he continued. “That at one point some things give you a bit of an idea of a direction, and that’s what we kept working on.”
The improvements haven’t come overnight, but rather through methodical development.
“I definitely felt that in Zandvoort already we took a step that seemed to work quite well, and then here another step which felt again a little bit better,” he concluded.
With Verstappen looking back to his dominant best, rival teams will be worried that Red Bull might have solved their mid-season slump just as the championship enters its final stretch.
